Hezbollah

Hezbollah, also spelled as Hizbullah ("Party of God") is a Shia Muslim political party of Lebanon, with anti-West, anti-Zionist, and Islamic nationalist views. The organization was founded in 1982 by Shia clerics during the Lebanese Civil War, with the goal of opposing the invading armies of Israel and the United Nations peacekeepers. In 2008, after the 2006 Lebanese protests, Hezbollah became a political party in a national unity government with rival factions. Hezbollah held 11 of 30 cabinet seats, giving them veto power in the country, but their popularity later slightly decreased. In 2015, only 2 Hezbollah members were in the Cabinet of Lebanon, and Hezbollah had 12 of 128 seats in the Parliament of Lebanon.

History
Hezbollah's origins were in 1982, when it was founded by 5,000 fundamentalists who had been trained in Iranian-operated camps at Balbeck, 50 miles north of Beirut, Lebanon. The organization's first Secretary-General was Subhi al-Tufayli, and its co-founders were Abbas al-Musawi, Imad Mugniyah, and Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah's name means "Party of God" in Arabic, and its goals were to destroy the state of Israel and to liberate Jerusalem from what they perceived to be Jewish occupation. The Hezbollah group started out as a terrorist group, launching attacks against Israel and United States interests during the Lebanese Civil War. Hezbollah was officially created in 1985, the same year that Israel withdrew its forces from Lebanon to end a violent war against the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Its first Secretary-General was Subhi al-Tufayli, who was in that post from 1983 to 1991. Hezbollah used suicide attacks against Israel in the first stages of their conflict, and was one of the first groups in the Middle East to use suicide bombing, assassination, capturing foreign soldiers, murdering, and hijackings. They did not follow the 1990 Taif Agreement, which ended the Lebanese Civil War - the agreement stated that all militias had to be disbanded, but the Syrian Arab Republic allowed Hezbollah to retain control of their armory. Both Syria and Iran were to fund Hezbollah's terrorist war against Israeli and American interests, and they became a major threat.

The first major Hezbollah terrorist attack was the bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which was carried out with the assistance of Iran. 85 people were killed and over 300 were wounded in the deadliest bombing in Argentina. The bombing of the AMIA building was a wake-up call to the world, and Hezbollah was declared a terrorist organization. Hezbollah was taken over by Abbas al-Musawi after it was decided that al-Tufayli was ineffective, and Musawi began a series of Katyusha rocket attacks against Israel from Lebanon, with the support of Syria and Iran. Hezbollah was the cause of several Israeli incursions into Lebanon, and it came to symbolize Shi'ite terrorism in the Muslim world.

In 2006, Israel invaded Lebanon it what came to be known as the "July War" in Lebanon, hoping to disarm or disrupt Hezbollah. Israel's offensive led to the condemnation of both sides, and Israel ended its one month and two days-long campaign on 14 August 2006. 121 Israeli Defense Force (IDF) troops were killed and 1,244 wounded, while 46 civilians were killed and 1,489 wounded. 500-800 Hezbollah troops were killed in the conflict, while 1,191 Lebanese civilians and 43 Lebanese police and soldiers were killed. Hezbollah gained a public relations victory due to the failure of Israel to defeat Hezbollah, and in 2008 they gained 11 seats in the government in the aftermath of the post-Cedar Revolution riots, and Hezbollah effectively had veto powers. Hezbollah rose to become a political party, having some form of legitimacy.

Hezbollah not only had large influence in the government of Lebanon, but their armed forces were even stronger than the Lebanese Army. Hezbollah was called the "greatest guerrilla group in the world" by Israeli gommander Gui Zur, with 7,000-11,000 troops and volunteers (Iran claimed that they had 65,000 troops). In 2008, Israel weakened Hezbollah by assassinating Imad Mughniyah with a car bomb in Damascus, which caused Hezbollah to launch more attacks.

In 2011, at the start of the Syrian Civil War, Hezbollah pledged allegiance to the Ba'ath Party government of Bashar al-Assad, an unpopular dictator who was infamous for using chemical gases against protesters. Subhi al-Tufayli, the first leader of Hezbollah, disagreed with Hezbollah's choice to side with the government, as they massacred innocent civilians, mainly fellow Muslims. Hezbollah also stepped up its attacks against Israel, bombarding them with artillery fire. In January 2015 Israel took out the son of Imad Mughniyah, Jihad Mughniyah, along with other Hezbollah and Iranian generals. The organization responded by firing at the Mount Hermon Ski Resort on the Golan Heights border with Syria, which was a very dangerous area during the Syrian Civil War.